Abstract
There is a large amount of Information Technology and Communication (ITC) tools that surround scholar activity. The prominent place of the peer-review process upon publication has promoted a crowded market of technological tools in several formats. Despite this abundance, many tools are unexploited or underused because they are not known by the academic community. In this study, we explored the availability and characteristics of the assisting tools for the peer-reviewing process. The aim was to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the tools available at this time, and to hint at new trends for further developments. The result of an examination of literature assisted the creation of a novel taxonomy of types of software available in the market. This new classification is divided into nine categories as follows: (I) Identification and social media, (II) Academic search engines, (III) Journal-abstract matchmakers, (IV) Collaborative text editors, (V) Data visualization and analysis tools, (VI) Reference management, (VII) Proofreading and plagiarism detection, (VIII) Data archiving, and (IX) Scientometrics and Altmetrics. Considering these categories and their defining traits, a curated list of 220 software tools was completed using a crowdfunded database (AlternativeTo) to identify relevant programs and ongoing trends and perspectives of tools developed and used by scholars.
Highlights
Information and communications technologies have changed the nature and the tasks of the peer-reviewing process of scholarly publications
This new classification is divided into nine categories as follows: (I) Identification and social media, (II) Academic search engines, (III) Journal-abstract matchmakers, (IV) Collaborative text editors, (V) Data visualization and analysis tools, (VI) Reference management, (VII) Proofreading and plagiarism detection, (VIII) Data archiving, and (IX) Scientometrics and Altmetrics
After identifying every leading software in each category, we performed an extended query looking for alternative software to create a more comprehensive list
Summary
Information and communications technologies have changed the nature and the tasks of the peer-reviewing process of scholarly publications. Digital format decreased the publishing time by offering a systematized submission and review. It created new distribution schemes for articles such as Open Access (OA), or subscription-based access among other innovative platforms. While most of these changes have occurred on the publisher’s side, there have been a lot of new opportunities in the way that scholars produce and handle information. This study is valuable for researchers, but for software developers as well. The development of a manuscript is inherently a multi-disciplinary activity that
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